We took a big family trip about a week ago to Southern California. We met up with my wife's parents and spent a week with the three kids at Disneyland, California Adventure and Knott's Berry Farm.
It was a great trip. The kids were the right age, the weather was fine, and we paced ourselves. I booked a flight/hotel deal with Alaska and stayed at the Holiday Inn in Buena Park. The room was a queen bed in one section and a "kids area" that included a bunk bed, a day bed, TV and dresser in their area, plus a big fridge and microwave. The kids ate free (albeit a mediocre restaurant), free shuttles to Disneyland and Knotts - and free WiFi!
I brought the Zune 30 loaded with some videos if the kids wanted to see something at the end of the day. Unfortunately, the TVs were just ancient - their old tubes fading to dark on the edges. Each TV had an RCA in for video and audio (mono?) and the input switched automatically to this AUX line when you plugged in the RCA video cable. The main TV had no sound through this AUX line and the other TV had nothing.
I did have the repair guy show up and he said he yes, the TVs were old and shot and he would try to find us another room. How about just a new TV? He brought one in, maybe almost as old, but it did work. Oh well.
I used the Nikon and collected about 300 photos and a few shorts videos. I imported the day's shots into Windows Live Photo Gallery at the end of the day and sharpened, cropped and even tagged 'em. I then uploaded the collection to Windows Live Skydrive to share with other family members. Live Photo Gallery doesn't yet support direct upload to Skydrive so you still have to drag and drop.
I'd also like to see Live Photo Gallery support upload to Costco's photo site. It's cheaper to upload and print at Costco than printing at home by almost .10 a print for 4x6 - nice!
I also used Disney's PhotoPass, whereby pro photographers take pictures of you with Mickey, Ariel, etc and they get wirelessly uploaded to a share. You login with your PhotoPass number and they are all there. Big downside is that each print is $12.95. Get this - the CD of your images is $79.95 - criminy! You can "PrntScrn" and scrape it off the site. Not print worthy but not bad.
We had 30 photos taken by the PhotoPass people, and only one of them was any good. The rest were horribly framed, poorly posed, and badly lit. I was shocked, as they were using some really nice cameras (Nikon, I believe). Just goes to show that a lousy photographer with excellent equipment will still take lousy pictures.
We liked the free photos you could email to yourself from the Buzz Lightyear ride. Also, after we got off the Tower of Terror and they had pictures of us for sale, I just took a quick snap of the monitor and it turned out fine.
Posted by: Phil | March 10, 2008 at 11:36 AM